


Mr. Fix-It

by Epiphanyx7



Category: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
Genre: Babysitting, Chaos, Drama, F/M, M/M, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-11
Updated: 2009-12-11
Packaged: 2017-11-01 01:39:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/350564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Epiphanyx7/pseuds/Epiphanyx7
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It isn't even surprising, actually, that somehow in between Simon apologising to the Media, Jordan having a baby, and Matt and Harry finally getting together, that everything had also managed to fall apart.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mr. Fix-It

**Author's Note:**

> Started a long time ago, this summer, and not finished until now. I guess. Tom/Lucy mainly, but side mentions of Simon/Darius, Matt/Harriet, and Alex/Dylan.

  


Simon's apology hits the airwaves shortly after dawn, Tom watches it online on his laptop, half-asleep in Germany with his little brother's head on his shoulder. He shuts the laptop and stares out at nothing, missing Lucy in an abstract way, missing everyone at the show just a little bit less. He's content, here, with Mark safe and sound and his parents just coming off of their drug-or-alcohol induced comas, and Tom feels almost too wired on adrenaline and his eightieth cup of coffee to sleep, so he tucks the blanket around Mark's shoulders a little bit tighter. When they were little, this was a hell of a lot easier, but Mark's gained height and weight and he looks like himself, just like he always had, but he also looks like an adult, like someone grown.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Tom thinks that he should feel guilty, or apologetic, or anything other then relieved right now. He knows that what he'd been planning on doing -- that wasn't right, and now with Mark safe beside him he knows that everything Captain Douchebag had said was correct. He still doesn't care, still doesn't give a flying fuck.

He watches Simon's apology again, with his headphones on and the volume turned down low, watches Simon backlit by the sunrise, pink clouds and the LA skyline behind him. He hopes that Lucy is watching. He hopes Lucy's smart enough to start writing a sketch on this, like, immediately, so she can pitch it to Matt before he gets the idea himself.

-

After nine days with his family, Tom's chomping at the bit to get the fuck out and go back to the studio, so he gratefully hugs them all goodbye and tries not to run to the car that's taking him to the airport. He's not entirely successful, but he calls his mom from the airport to say he loves her, and he can tell from the sound of her voice that she's happy, too.

"Oh, hey --" he says, almost as an afterthought. "Tell Mark that he's welcome to visit, you know, if he has time---" and then they're off on a tangent, somehow managing to remind Tom that he's inferior to his little brother in every way possible while also emphasizing how much they love him, and also that Mark's unit needs replacements for their body armor. Tom makes arrangements.

-

When he steps back into the Studio, Tom half expects Harry to be there with a bucket of tears and a box of tissues, and for Simon to catch him up in a hug, or for Matt to be there to yell at him about being a cast member short for last week's show. Instead, he is treated to a shocking amount of indifference.

"Okay," he says, heading to his dressing room.

He barely manages to get his coat off before Lucy's got him up against the wall, her arms around his neck. "Tom," she says, crisp vowels and wide eyes that make him want to kiss her -- so he does, because he's allowed to, and he can almost forget that she's murmuring soft words against his lips. "Been awful--" she whispers between kisses. "Missed you -- so much. Mmm. Tom," and then she breaks away to stare into his eyes (Lucy has amazing eyes, so Tom's down with this plan, too) and then she says, the first indication that this is anything other than a week-long separation and the clusterfuck that was his last night in LA, "You have to do something."

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Tom replies earnestly, although he is filling with pride at being the person Lucy comes to in her time of distress. Something about being her knight in shining armor has more appeal than the entire spread of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition.

-

That's when he finds out that Simon's apology was, apparently, the last thing that had gone right with the show.

"But Friday's show was great!" Tom protests, because he'd watched it with his family. They'd laughed.

"I had three sketches on the air," Lucy says with a dreamy expression, and then she shakes it off and gives him an almost stern look. It's surprisingly sexy. "Tom, darling, I absolutely adore you and yes, last Friday's show was about as good as we could have expected, without one of the premier cast members and with only six writers --"

"Six?"

"Oh, right, Matt hired two more, a writing duo from New York who've been working off-broadway, or something. I'm not quite sure about the details, there, but they're both women and fairly talented, even though they haven't had any sketches on." Lucy explains. "And you're distracting me," which is, in Tom's opinion, the perfect time to interrupt her with a kiss.

-

Forty minutes later, Lucy is trying to find her stockings and Tom's sprawled in a chair, tipping his head back as he exhales smoke. "I didn't know you carry smokes in your purse," he says.

"There's a lot you don't know, Tom, and if you stopped interrupting me," Lucy huffs, shrieking with laughter when he pulls her back into his lap.

"Okay," Tom says, wrapping his arms around her waist (Lucy has a lovely waist) and putting on his serious face. "I'm listening. Tell me what's going on. Six writers, I think you'd said?"

"Yes, well," Lucy says, settling in, legs dangling over the armrest as she tries to get comfortable. "Matt hired two new writers, yeah?"

-

It isn't even surprising, actually, that somehow in between Simon apologising to the Media, Jordan having a baby, and Matt and Harry finally getting together, that everything had also managed to fall apart. With the fall lineup as good as set in stone, Jordan had collapsed into bed trying to recover from one of the six thousand different complications surrounding Becky's birth, leaving Danny with a newborn baby and trying to run the show as Matt and Harry turned into lovesick saps in front of everyone.

"You're joking," Tom says, resting his head on Lucy's shoulder. "Already? Already? How have they broken up already?"

"I'm not quite sure," Lucy replies. "Although I'm fairly certain that with Danny being under all that stress, it was only a matter of time until he snapped -- he tried to ask Matt for something, presumably to babysit Becky -- I may not know a lot about newborns, but I'm afraid that the waking up every three hours to eat and then vomit all over the place and defecate all over the office may not exactly be a selling point in Danny's book."

"Danny likes kids, he'll be fine,"

"He needs sleep, Tom, and Matt was rather insensitive about the whole thing."

"So Danny and Matt got into a fight, about something that was neither of their fault, and then Matt and Harry broke up over the fight because Matt blamed her for the part where he's not talking to Danny--"

"Oh but that's not all of it," Lucy sighs, petting Tom's hair. "Because Danny's still trying to take care of Rebecca, yeah? And, well, aside from Matt being the emotional equivalent of a Ritalin-deprived three year old and Danny bollocksing the show to all hell, Simon's being a world-class prat and Darius handing in notice---"

"Darius is quitting?" Tom groans, shocked and starting to understand Lucy's desperation.

"And Dylan and Alex are insisting that they're a couple." Lucy finishes with a miserable sob. "But nobody knows if they're joking or not, so naturally everyone's gone all strange about it, as if it makes a bloody difference."

"They're joking," Tom says firmly. "This is about Harriet cornering everyone and begging Jeannie not to go out with Matt, and then changing her mind six thousand times, and then generally being crazy, and then finally saying that cast members were free to date whoever they want, including Dylan and Alex."

"What?" Lucy asks, confusion muddling her features. (Lucy is almost painfully adorable when she's confused, so Tom leans forward to kiss her nose.)

"Don't worry about it," Tom says, knowing that he sounds like Danny or Jordan or like one of a hundred other executives that he hadn't liked at the time, but was now starting to resemble. "I'll see what I can do."

-

Tom is not the type to make lists, although if he were, it would look like this.

1 - Danny needs sleep.  
2 - Matt and Danny need to make up.  
 ~~3 - Matt and Harriet need to get back together~~  
3 - Simon needs to get laid or whatever it is that's turning him into an ass  
4 - Convince Darius not to quit  
5 -

If there should be a number five on the list, Tom sure as hell isn't going to write it down. He hates lists, so he scraps that idea and instead goes in search of Suzanne, who has always been much better at that sort of thing that he is.

-

"Okay, I can give you five minutes," Suzanne says. She looks stern. She's always stern, which is fair, because she's pretty much the Cereberus to Matt's office of the Underworld. "But no more -- and let me tell Matt I'm stepping out."

She walks into Matt's office and Tom hears something that sounds a lot like glass breaking, and then Suzanne steps out looking as unruffled as she always does. She levels her gaze at Tom and picks up her purse. "Walk with me," She says. "I'm going to Starbucks," and if the alternative is staying here with --- is Matt crying in his office? -- Tom jumps up and falls into step with her.

"How is it," he asks, holding the door open for her as they leave the studio, "that this entire place has fallen apart in the past nine days?"

Suzanne sighs. "Relationships based on extreme circumstances never work out," she says.

"If you're not about to work Keanu Reeves into the dialogue, I don't see how that is relevant," Tom says.

She glares at him. "Nine days ago there was a lot of adrenaline going on. Everybody was high on it, and everything was resolved while everyone was still coasting on their adrenaline high. But that doesn't last. People go to sleep. They wake up and realize that life doesn't wrap up nicely with a happily-ever after bow. And when coming down off of the adrenaline high, everybody is bitchy and angry and all the emotions they'd been able to repress throughout the ordeal come rising to the surface --"

"So the entire Studio got into a relationship because my brother was a hostage?" Tom asks, feeling a little sick just saying the words. Jesus. Mark.

"No," Suzanne says, pointing at a Starbucks across the street from where they were standing. "The entire Studio got into a relationship because your brother was held hostage and Jordan almost died and Danny's a father now and Matt and Harriet got back together and Dylan and Alex came out of the closet and Jeannie decided to lay her claws into Andy Mackinaw and Simon went on air and yelled at the media and was labelled an Al-Queida supporter."

"I really can't tell if you're joking or not," Tom says.

"You'll get used to it," Suzanne says, and waits patiently for him to open the door for her.

-

"I'll make some calls," Suzanne promises, and apparently working as Matt Albie's assistant means that she's better at multitasking than anyone in the world. She's scribbling down a list with one hand with her phone pressed to her ear while they wait in line (and it's barely ten thirty on a Monday, so why is there such a ridiculous line in Starbucks anyway, Tom wonders).

The list of coffee they need to order is a mile long, and Tom's more than a little impressed that Lucy is rattling the whole thing off by memory. "We'll wait over here," She says, moving to the side and leaving Tom to foot the bill.

In any other situation, Tom would -- well, to be honest, he'd probably pay anyway, but Tom's feeling grateful that Suzanne is helping him, so he doesn't even feel passive-aggressively bitchy about it. "A hundred and sixteen dollars," he repeats to the barista, who looks expectant. Tom gives her his debit card because, hey, why the hell not.

Suzanne is talking on the phone after he's paid, and stacking trays of coffee for Tom to carry as well. "It's kind of an emergency," she's saying, and "No, actually, it can't wait till tomorrow. Today. Preferably before lunch, unless that's too much to ask?"

-

They get back to the studio without spilling any of the coffee, although Tom's arms are aching and he feels a little bit put-out at being used as a pack mule. Suzanne is still on her phone, rattling off numbers and something that sound suspiciously like a salary, and then she waves for him to put the drinks down on a table. "You -- and you," She says, pointing at interns who immediately respond with a stricken, deer-in-headlights expression. "Gather the rest of the PAs and the interns, would you? Everybody's name is on their cups, make sure they all know how much they are loved and appreciated, because this week is going to be the one that makes Hell Week look like a walk in the god damned park," And then she grabs a cup off of the top, dragging Tom with her as they move back to Matt's office.

"That coffee was for the PAs?" He mumbles.

"Don't worry about it," She says. "I don't do that very often, but this past week has been -- well." And then she steps into Matt's office with Tom in tow, and Tom has a sudden flash of reservation.

Matt is hunched over his desk, glaring down at the paper in front of him. There is, Tom notices, broken glass all over the floor, a shattered laptop on the floor, the clock on the wall is either off or broken, although the broken glass and plastic is hinting towards the latter.

Suzanne navigates her way towards Matt's desk, expertly avoiding anything sharp and putting the coffee down on his desk. She hands him a baseball, apparently having the ability to make objects appear out of nowhere.

Tom has never been afraid of Matt -- okay, he's always been a little afraid of Matt - but this is the first time he's ever thought that Matt was absolutely batshit crazy.

"Matt," Suzanne says. "You have one more hour, and then this is going to stop."

Matt takes the baseball, throwing it against the opposite wall with unnecessary force. He barely glances at the coffee.

"Okay be that way," Suzanne says, and stomps out of the office, reaching out to grab Tom by the sleeve and tug him along in her wake.

-

"So, what?" Tom says. "You're going to help me fix this, right?"

"I can't get a sitter before 4 PM." Suzanne says. "Although we're set until Friday, after that. Can you watch the kid so Danny can get some sleep?"

Tom stares at her.

"Oh," Suzanne says, and then she looks at her clipboard. "You and Simon are both on the list of people who shouldn't be near the baby."

"I resent that," Tom tells her. "We only decapitated the doll because we knew it wasn't a real baby!"

"Well if I look after the kid, I won't be able to do any of the other stuff that needs to get done." Suzanne says. "So unless you have a better idea, it looks like none of this is going to get resolved until four this afternoon---"

"And that's just not good enough," Tom decides. "Okay, what if I ask Andy?"

Suzanne looks skeptical.

-

"This isn't a good idea," Andy says, for something like the forty-seventh time. "I mean -- I haven't looked after a newborn in five years," he does not look confident.

Unfortunately, Danny is looking at Andy as if he's the second coming of Christ, and Becky is waving tiny fists in his face, her face scrunched up into the kind of displeasure usually emphasized by lung-busting screams.

"Hey," Andy says, and he does something, and just like that she stops looking like she's about to explode. Curled into the curve of his arm, she looks unbearably tiny, bald but with a tiny pink bow on her head, and Andy wraps the blanket around her more securely, something in his expression that makes Tom want to look away.

"Please," Danny says. "Just until -- when did you say, Tom?"

"Four," Tom says, trying to back out of the room.

"Just until four," Danny repeats. "I'm going to -- go over the last show, try to figure out what happened with the timing and then yell at somebody about it, but -- I love her, I really do, I just cannot work with a newborn for ten days in a row, okay?"

Andy looks down at the baby girl in his arms. Tom feels like a jackass, because he was here five years earlier when Millicent had been born. "Yeah," He says. "Okay." He doesn't smile.

"I'm... going to run," Tom says. And then, he does.

-

"Danny's not sleeping," he reports to Suzanne, who is still calm.

"Not now," She says.

"Danny's not sleeping," he hisses, and Suzanne turns to him with a glare that could kill, or at least it could kill someone who hadn't grown up with Tom's father's Death Glares.

"Not. Now." She repeats, and there's a sort of bloodthirsty look in her eyes.

Tom takes a step back. "I'm going to go talk to Sim," he says, although Suzanne is already ignoring him.

-

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Simon says, and Tom stops in his tracks because he hasn't even said anything yet.

"Uh, Sim?"

"No, don't even start with me," Simon says, glaring and moving over to leave Tom room to sit. They're alone in the room, which is surprising, because usually Simon has badgered one of the writers into doing one of his sketches, or he's flirting with his newest girl, or he's just goofing off with the rest of them. This -- alone on a Monday, being depressed or angry, this is completely unlike Simon.

"I haven't started," Tom says. "I haven't said anything, Sim."

Simon turns to him, meets his eyes. They stay like that for a minute, staring at each other, and then Simon unclenches and nods. "Right, okay, you haven't started in on me, I'll give you props for that at least."

"Are you allowed to give me props?" Tom wonders.

"I'll give you anything I damn well please," Simon snaps, and Tom stares at him. "What?" He asks. "What?"

"No, really," Tom says. "What crawled up your ass and died? Because I'm finding it hard to believe you're just being an asshole because you don't like having friends."

"It's not that --" And then Simon's gesturing wildly, looking as if he's about to start tearing at his hair. "There's -- I don't even fucking know, man."

"You don't?"

"This thing with Darius," Simon begins, starting to bitch in a way that most fourteen-year-old girls would be incredibly jealous of if they knew.

Tom closes his eyes and tries to count to ten, but he can't manage to get past four before he's interrupting. "This thing with Darius?" He yells. "Please, for the love of fucking christ, Sim, tell me that this thing with Darius isn't the same fucking thing with Darius that's been going on since Lucy and I got together?"

"Is that really how you tell time?" Simon asks, a wry twist to his lips. "I mean, come on, man, how fucking pussy-whipped are you?"

"Very," Tom replies smoothly, deliving Simon a smack upside the head and neatly avoiding retaliation by standing up. "Which, by the way, leads me to ask how long it's been for you -- because seriously, being an asshole is not a good look for you."

"I'm not being an asshole," Simon says. "Darius is --"

"Darius is what?" Tom asks. "You two can not still be fighting about this. Do you even know why you don't like him?"

"I'm not the one with the problem," Simon says. "He's the one with the problem -- and I'm going to put him in his place."

"And then what?" Tom asks.

He's met with a confused look. "What do you mean?"

"What happens after you put Darius in his place?" Tom asks. "Because to be honest, Sim, you've been treating him like shit for a long fucking time, over a sketch that wasn't even funny to begin with--"

"It was funny," Simon interrupted.

"It was stupid," Tom interrupts. "It was very fucking stupid, and the only reason it made it to air is because you'd pitched the idea and Matt was distracted. If Lucy or Darius had come up with it, he would have left it on the writer's room floor where it belonged, and you and I both know it."

Simon's sulk is no less irritating than Tom remembers.

"Whatever," Tom says. "I'm going to go find Harry."

-

Harry, although she is still her ususal kind self, breaks down and cries all over Tom's shoulder for a solid six minutes without once making a coherent noise. And when she finally does regain her ability to form actual words, she begins a heartfelt rendition of All The Ways Matt Is A Terrible Person, variations on which Tom has heard several times before. It's not that he wants to ignore her, it's just that it's all the same every time so it's like an automatic reflex to make soothing noises and tune her out.

AFter she's finished crying, she sniffs loudly and wipes her eyes with a kleenex she managed to pull out of nowhere (Tom's not convinced she doesn't have freaky magical powers) and says, "Thank you, Tommy." 

He smiles at her. "You know I'll totally kick his ass if you want me to," He offers,  mostly because it makes her laugh.

-

Matt and Harry manage to work out their differences and get back together by the end of the day, although Tom is fairly certain that his mind is going to explode with hatred for the rest of the cast and crew. The only person not currently on his list (and oh, he's keeping a list) is Lucy, who has at the very least been able to show him the outline for some sketches she's been working on.

Sim's been hiding in his dressing room, sulking with a bottle of scotch, and Danny's nowhere to be found. Neither, for that matter, is Suzanne.

"I hate them all," Tom moans, dropping his head onto Lucy's shoulder. She massages his temples, dropping soft little kisses onto his forehead ever so often. It feels kind of awesome, actually.

"Don't worry about it," Lucy says, and she sounds relaxed, as if there's no stress in the world now that Tom's returned. "I'm sure it'll sort itself out..."

Fat chance, Tom thinks morosely.

-

He's wrong, of course, because when he walks into the studio the next day, Danny's awake, looking fresh and well-rested and he's holding the baby curled up in one arm, her head resting in the crook of his elbow. "You'd better be quiet if you want to talk to me," Danny says. "She's sleeping." 

Tom nods and gives Danny a thumb's up. "Uh," he says. "Harry -- and Matt?"

"Back together," Danny replies, making a face.

"Darius?"

"Not quitting," Suzanne says, coming up behind them with her heels softly clicking over the floor. She pauses to coo over Becky for a moment, and then she looks at Danny with her business face on. "Matt has had be drafting apologies since six o'clock last night," She says. "Please, for the love of god and all that is holy, go into his office and talk to him before I find myself delivering a singing telegram.

Danny looks horrified. "He wouldn't," he protested.

"He thinks you'll appreciate the irony," Suzanne tell him pointedly.

Danny sighs. "Okay, but you're going to have to hold Becky while I go into his office. If he tries to hug me while I'm holding her, I have no idea how that's going to go," and Suzanne nods.

"Huh," Tom says, watching them. Because if you consider the way the studio had been falling apart not twenty-four hours earlier... things have gotten kind of normal. And pretty suddenly, too.

-

The only person he still needed to reason with was Sim, so Tom tried to find him. Or at least, he thought he did -- except Simon was in the writer's room, with Darius, where they were enthusiastically making up their differences on the writer's room table.

"Oh god, my eyes," Tom yelled.

"Get out!" Simon yelled back. Darius, who was at least twenty percent more fully clothed that Simon, started to laugh.

"I'll be going now," Tom said, eyes shut tightly as he fumbled his way towards the doorway. "I'm going to go -- scrub my eyeballs with bleach, or something ---" and he slammed the door behind him, leaning against the wall to gasp dramatically. Inside the room, noises started back up.

"YOU KNOW YOU HAVE A DRESSING ROOM FOR THAT SORT OF THING!" Tom yelled. The noises stopped.

"GO AWAY!" Simon and Darius both yelled back.

Because he knew when to leave well enough alone, Tom shrugged and decided to go hang out with some of the non-crazy people. Like Dylan and Alex, they weren't crazy. The weirdest thing they'd done recently was tell people that they were dating -- and Tom was fairly certain that was a joke on their part. Not that there was anything wrong with that sort of thing but, well, it was pretty damned obvious that Dylan was totally into Jeannie in a very real way.

-

"Of course," Alex said, rolling his eyes. "It's really not the same without you, you know?"

"What, so, without me the studio falls apart?" Tom hazarded.

"Naw," Dylan snorted. "Dude, without you, the _people_ fall apart. You know you're the only person here who can actually make people laugh? For real, I mean, none of that pun and dumb humour shit. For a bunch of comedy writers and performers, you're pretty much the only one who's actually _funny_."

-  



End file.
